Substitute For Intellect

COLUMNIST Charley Reese's recent diatribe against liberals is all too typical of the mush-brained thinking that he and his congressional hero Newt Gingrich exercise as a substitute for intellect.

The charge that liberals are ''a lot more hostile to anti-communists than . . . to communists'' is a validation of Reese's ignorance.

What liberals frequently oppose is foreign policy that ostensibly is geared to fight communism but almost invariably ends up placing captured American weapons of war in the hands of the very communist forces it hoped to defeat.

One day, although it seems unlikely, perhaps Reese and the far-right clique represented by Gingrich accidentally will stumble upon the fact that just by declaring a policy anti-communist and wrapping it in the American flag doesn't mean that we have at last found an effective way to fight communism.

There are just as many anti-communists among liberals who oppose such policies as there among conservatives who blindly support them.